Logical Fallacy In The Breakfast Club

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In the movie the Breakfast Club, five teens are locked up in Saturday school for nine hours. All of these teens come from completely different backgrounds, and none of them truly understand one another. As the day progresses, the audience learns just how imperfect each of them are, and how tough life can be. Through this film, the director was able to capture the minds of young adults and how their childhood plays a direct role in the way they develop into adults. Three topics of development that were shown in the movie are imaginary audiences, peer pressure, and logical fallacies. First, imaginary audiences are created through those who “believe they are at center stage, with all eyes on them, and they imagine how others might react to their appearance and behavior.” Claire, one of the main characters, who happens to be the typical “rich” and “popular” girl in school. During a scene where her and a couple of the other students are sitting in the library, Claire asks, “Do you know how popular I am? I’m so popular. Everybody loves me so much.” This is …show more content…

A more specific type of logical fallacy is called base rate neglect, in which a person choses to ignore information on a subject, and focus more on their emotions towards said subject. In the film it is evident that the students in Saturday school come from different cliques. The teen that people would describe as a nerd, Brian, asks what becomes of them when they go to school on Monday because he considers them friends. Claire, the preppy popular girl, answers him honestly, telling him how it is unlikely that they will be seen together in the hallways because she knew that her friends would laugh at her and go would Andy’s, the jock. He instantly becomes really upset and even cries. He let his emotions take over the information he already knew was factual. Teens often do this because they are going through a period of intense hormonal release and they want to fit